Chapter 24
Life resumed, but not gently. It never did after something like this. The business district reopened under layers of caution: temporary steel barriers, armed patrols on every corner, drones hovering low enough to be seen and heard. Shattered glass was cleared within days, blood scrubbed from pavement until only faint discolorations remained, but the air itself seemed unwilling to forget. Memorials appeared organically, flowers taped to lamp posts, handwritten notes wedged between barricades, digital candles flickering endlessly on social feeds. Names were spoken on morning news cycles, then repeated again at night, each repetition dulling the shock but deepening the weight. Three hundred twelve confirmed dead. Thousands injured. A number large enough to be abstract, yet personal enough that almost everyone knew someone who didn't make it home.
While the city mourned in public, something else moved quietly beneath the surface.
The footage didn't surface all at once. It never did. It leaked in fragments, copied, transferred, compressed, renamed, pulled from a separate Nexus Tech Rift Monitoring Facility that shared backend access with the destroyed seven-floor branch. Whoever stole it wasn't careless. They bypassed standard audit logs, accessed mirrored backups, and lifted raw CCTV feeds without triggering alarms until long after the fact. It was not an act of panic. It was deliberate.
The first clip that circulated internally was grainy and silent, timestamped during the height of the invasion. A wide-angle camera from the third-floor lounge showed chaos frozen in jittering frames: overturned furniture, muzzle flashes, a Noid's four-armed silhouette surging into view. Then the feed caught something unexpected, a man stepping forward, calm where everything else fractured. No armor. No visible augmentation. Just a straight posture and a fountain pen held like a blade.
The footage stuttered as compression artifacts tore across the screen, but the moment remained unmistakable. The Noid lunged, and stopped. Hesitated. As if reassessing. As if something about the man in front of it didn't fit whatever calculus governed its violence.
Someone in the viewing room whispered, barely audible on the captured audio, asking who he was. No one answered.
Inside the Cleaner Agency's internal review division, the footage played again and again. Analysts slowed it frame by frame, overlaid heat maps, motion vectors, biometric estimates. They watched how bullets bounced uselessly off Noid hide, how trained security personnel fell in seconds—and how that man moved differently. Not faster. Not stronger. Just… precisely enough. Three confirmed Noid kills were logged under his presence. Possibly four, depending on how one interpreted the collapsing frame at the edge of the feed. No registered combat awakening. No known augmentation. No official clearance.
One senior operative finally broke the silence, muttering that the technique didn't belong to any Cleaner doctrine. Another pointed out the absence of fear responses—heart rate steady, posture relaxed, decision-making instantaneous. A woman in gray uniform noted, with quiet unease, that he appeared to be holding back. That observation lingered longer than the rest. Holding back implied choice. Choice implied awareness. Awareness implied danger, or potential.
Across the city, and then across the world, fragments of the footage escaped containment.
On social media, reactions collided and multiplied at impossible speed. Some called him a hero. Others accused Nexus of staging propaganda to protect their image. Rift-watchers replayed the clip obsessively, drawing circles around moments where the Noid hesitated, slowed, recalculated. Amateur analysts argued over thermal data, pointing out how the creature's targeting shifted around him. Conspiracy threads bloomed overnight, speculating about hidden programs, unregistered gods, weaponized civilians. Survivors chimed in, raw and furious, insisting it was real, insisting they had seen him pull wounded people into cover, had heard him calmly tell them where to run while everything else screamed.
The Cleaner Agency monitored it all without comment.
Official interviews aired on evening news. A woman wrapped in a borrowed jacket, hands still trembling days later, described how she didn't know his name, how he hadn't shouted or panicked, hadn't promised safety or victory. He had just pointed, precise and certain, and told them to move now. When asked whether she thought he had powers, she hesitated before answering that she thought he had something more unsettling: restraint.
Within Nexus Tech, damage-control meetings blurred into one another. Executives argued over liability, optics, and data security. The security director advised denial and investigation. Mara Jones, exhausted and pale, confirmed quietly that the man in the footage worked there. That statement landed heavily. If the Cleaner Agency had already noticed him, it was too late to bury the truth. It would surface again. It always did.
In a Cleaner Agency evaluation wing, analysts compiled a growing list of civilians flagged for unusual combat effectiveness during the breach. Most showed limited abilities and no training. Those were the ones that worried the Agency the most, not the powerful, but the willing. One junior analyst hesitated before pointing out a final anomaly: all Noid pathing converged toward heat-dense systems, toward rift-adjacent infrastructure—except in the immediate proximity of that man. The Noids adjusted. Avoided. Hesitated. As if some deeper instinct warned them away.
That observation was quietly marked for escalation.
By nightfall, candles burned low across the city, feeds looped endlessly, and the stolen footage continued to circulate in shadowed corners of the net. The world argued over what it meant, over who the man was, over whether humanity had crossed into a new phase of survival, or manipulation.
But beneath the noise, one truth settled with frightening clarity.
The Noids had not simply attacked a city.They had revealed that something within it could not be categorized.
And while Magnus's presence spread through rumor and stolen frames, Alexa, unseen by most of the cameras, found herself at the center of a different gravity entirely. One defined not by violence, but by survival, coordination, and the quiet miracle of lives pulled back from the edge.
The question was no longer whether the world had changed.
It was who would adapt fast enough to live in what came next.
The news cycle did not rest. It never did after a mass-casualty event, but this time, it didn't stay local.
Within forty-eight hours of the Nexus Tech incident, reports began pouring in from other regions. At first, they were treated as unrelated anomalies: increased rift instability in Eastern Europe, delayed closure cycles in South America, a monitored rift in West Africa briefly registering outbound pressure before stabilizing. Individually, none matched the scale of what had happened in the business district. Together, they formed a pattern that made analysts uneasy.
A global broadcast cut between feeds.
"…authorities in São Verdan confirm a Class-II rift briefly emitted hostile entities before being resealed by Cleaners. Officials emphasize the situation was contained, though three responders were injured"
The screen shifted.
"in contrast, experts are deeply concerned about what they're calling behavioral deviation in rift dynamics. For the first time since the Tower's emergence, creatures appear to be attempting outward migration"
A panel of specialists appeared, seated beneath bright studio lights. A Rift physicist leaned forward, fingers steepled. "The Tower has always operated on asymmetric rules," she said. "Human entry, internal trials, delayed closure. What we saw at Nexus breaks that asymmetry. It suggests either an escalation… or a recalibration."
Another analyst shook his head. "Or interference. We've assumed the Tower is static, reactive. But what if it observes outcomes? What if it adapts based on success rates?"
A former Cleaner commander cut in sharply. "Then what happened at Nexus wasn't a failure. It was data."
That word rippled through social media like a shockwave.
Data.Test conditions.Adaptive threat.
Clips circulated of commentators arguing over heat signatures, over the Noids' fixation on infrastructure rather than population density. One viral post overlaid maps from previous rift events, highlighting how they had disproportionately struck poorer, high-density areas—places with slower response times, weaker containment. The Nexus incident shattered that assumption.
"Why now?" a journalist asked during a live interview. "Why a wealthy district, fortified systems, rapid response capability?"
A systems theorist answered slowly, choosing words with care. "Because that's where the variables are. Advanced networks. High energy density. Centralized data. If the Tower, or whatever governs it, seeks efficiency, then it was inevitable."
On another channel, a roundtable devolved into heated argument.
"You're saying it chose that location?"
"I'm saying it learned."
"That implies intent."
"That implies intelligence."
Across continents, survivor testimonies began to surface. A woman in Berlin described how a rift's internal timer behaved erratically, stretching and compressing without warning. A man in Manila recounted how a creature inside a trial ignored him entirely, moving instead toward a generator room until it was destroyed. These stories, once dismissed as trauma-induced misinterpretations, were now archived, replayed, reanalyzed.
Even governments broke their usual silence.
A sanctioned spokesperson admitted, under pressure, that several rift monitoring centers had quietly upgraded cooling systems and thermal masking protocols. Another confirmed that Cleaner doctrine was being revised, no longer assuming containment by default. The phrase outbound breach potential entered official documents for the first time.
Online, debates turned darker.
If the Tower can change the rules, what stops it from changing them again?Were the Noids scouts?Why did some people survive when they shouldn't have? Who was the man in the footage, and why did the creatures hesitate?
In one widely shared clip, a rift researcher paused mid-sentence, visibly unsettled. "We've treated the Tower like a natural disaster," he said. "An earthquake. A storm. But storms don't refine their methods."
The anchor didn't interrupt.
"And earthquakes don't test responses."
As night fell in city after city, people stood beneath skies now permanently associated with crimson light and wondered whether safety had ever truly existed, or whether it had simply been allowed for a time.
Somewhere between the fear and the speculation, a quieter realization took root.
The Tower had not changed randomly.It had changed selectively.
And whatever intelligence governed the rifts had just confirmed something humanity had long suspected, but never proven:
Survival was no longer enough.
Now, the world was being evaluated.
In the weeks that followed, the world's attention fractured between fear and diplomacy. The Stronghold City of Kamaran, once whispered about as a private bastion of wealth, technology, and quiet influence, formally opened talks with the United Nations. What began as guarded dialogue quickly became strategic negotiation. Kamaran offered something no other state could fully provide: layered defenses against rift incursions, predictive modeling refined by lived encounters, and infrastructure designed from the ground up to survive a world where reality itself could tear open without warning. In return, the UN sought oversight, cooperation, and access, not control, but participation. Publicly, the talks were framed as a joint effort to protect humanity's future. Privately, many understood the truth: Kamaran was no longer just a city. It was becoming an axis.
While diplomats debated frameworks and authority, life continued in quieter corners. In Magnus's apartment, the chaos of the past weeks receded into something almost human. Alexa slept beside him, exhaustion etched into every breath she took. Her healing had limits, limits she had pushed again and again—and now her body demanded its due. Magnus lay awake, listening to the rhythm of her breathing, one arm around her as though anchoring her to something solid. He did not sleep easily anymore, not since the Nexus incident. Dread had found a place in him, unfamiliar but persistent, and it lingered even here, in silence.
Old Man Pete had retired two days after the attack. No speeches, no ceremony. He handed Magnus the bar keys with a tired smile and said, "Someone younger should keep it breathing." The bar opened only occasionally now, its lights warm but subdued, a place for whispered conversations and careful laughter. Magnus kept it running not for profit, but continuity, another fragile line tying the present to a world that once felt simpler.
Kamaran itself changed daily. Elders arrived quietly, escorted in unmarked convoys, entire families relocating under layers of clearance. These were not fighters like the Zhou, no hardened combatants, no martial discipline etched into their bones. The Twelve Elders were administrators, scholars, engineers, economists. Builders. Their strength was institutional, not physical, and their presence marked a shift in purpose. Kamaran was no longer preparing solely for defense. It was preparing for endurance.
The Stronghold's population swelled, not with refugees alone, but with specialists, planners, awakened civilians seeking structure rather than glory. Surveillance towers rose alongside residential districts. Cooling grids expanded. Energy dampening fields were tested and retested. Kamaran did not announce its growth, it demonstrated it.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world stared at the Pacific.
What had once been dismissed as an incomprehensible anomaly now dominated every broadcast: the massive wreckage standing upright in the ocean, defying waves, weather, and time itself. The Tower of Trials. Crimson-lit, impossibly tall, its silhouette burned into the collective consciousness of humanity. Official language still called it a tower, a test, a trial imposed by forces beyond comprehension.
But specialists no longer spoke so cautiously.
"It's not a tower," one researcher said during a leaked symposium. "It never was. It's a transmitter."
The word spread quickly.
A gigantic alien energy transmitter, anchored into the planet like a stake, broadcasting, measuring, adjusting. Rifts were not random tears. They were outputs. Controlled apertures responding to feedback. Success rates. Failure rates. Adaptation curves.
The Tower had not arrived to judge humanity.
It had arrived to interface with it.
As the sun set beyond Kamaran's reinforced skyline, Magnus stood at his window, looking out at a city that was becoming something unprecedented. Alexa stirred beside him, murmuring in her sleep, alive, here. For now.
The world believed it was watching the Tower.
Magnus knew better.
The Tower was watching back, and he didn't like
Magnus waited until Alexa's breathing evened out completely before moving. The faint tension in her shoulders finally eased, her hand loosening its grip on his shirt as sleep claimed her properly this time. He adjusted the blanket around her with practiced care, careful not to wake her, then stood and moved quietly through the apartment.
The lights came on one by one at his passing, soft and low, set deliberately so the space never felt harsh. House chores were mundane things, beneath notice to most, but to Magnus, they were grounding. He welcomed them.
He started in the kitchen.
The sink was full, not from neglect but exhaustion. He rolled up his sleeves, warm water running over his hands as he washed plates, mugs, and utensils one by one. The rhythm was steady, almost meditative. Each small task anchored him to the present, to a world that still required effort and attention. He wiped down the counter, disinfected surfaces, checked the refrigerator and discarded anything spoiled during the chaos of the past days. He made a mental note to restock fresh food later, things Alexa liked. Soup. Fruit. Simple meals she could manage while recovering.
From there, he moved through the apartment with quiet efficiency. Laundry sorted and loaded. Floors swept. Windows checked and sealed. Emergency power cells inspected and recharged. He tested the communication terminal, ensured the building's local sensors were still synced to Kamaran's updated network. Everything had a place. Everything had a purpose.
As he worked, fragments of thought drifted through him, not memories exactly, but comparisons. Entire civilizations he had watched rise and fall without anyone to notice the small details at the end. No one washed dishes then. No one folded clothes for someone they cared about. Collapse had always been grand, impersonal.
This was different.
He paused briefly at the living room window, looking out over the quiet street below. The city was healing, slowly, stubbornly. Emergency lights still flashed in the distance, but life was returning in small, defiant increments. People walked. Lights turned on. Somewhere nearby, laughter broke through the silence.
Magnus felt something unfamiliar settle in his chest again, not power, not control, but responsibility of a different kind. Not for a world. For one person.
He returned to the bedroom and sat at the edge of the bed for a moment, watching Alexa sleep. There were faint bruises at her wrists, healing slowly, and exhaustion etched into her face despite the calm of rest. He reached out, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead with a gentleness that would have surprised any who knew what he truly was.
Alexa woke to silence, the rare, gentle kind that didn't carry alarms or distant screams. For a moment, she lay still, disoriented, the weight of exhaustion pressing down on her like a second blanket. Light filtered through the curtains at an unfamiliar angle, too high, too bright. Noon, she realized vaguely.
She groaned and rolled onto her side, then slowly pushed herself up. Every muscle protested. Her head throbbed dully, not pain exactly, just the reminder of too many hours awake, too many lives passing through her hands. She didn't bother fixing her hair; it stuck out in uneven directions, tangled from sleep. Still half-dreaming, she slipped out of the bedroom, dragging her feet across the floor in oversized pajama bottoms and an old shirt she vaguely remembered stealing from Magnus at some point.
Magnus noticed her instantly.
He was by the kitchen counter, a mug in one hand, when he turned and saw her standing there like a ghost of herself, tired, rumpled, very real. Without hesitation, he set the mug down and crossed the space between them in a few quiet steps. He wrapped his arms around her, firm and warm, grounding in a way that made her shoulders sag with relief.
"You're awake," he said softly.
She leaned into him without thinking, forehead pressing against his chest. "What time is it?" she asked, her voice hoarse.
"Past noon," he replied. "You slept through the morning."
"Good," she muttered, then after a pause added, almost shyly, "I think I slept through… everything."
He let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh and tightened his hold just a little. "You needed it."
Alexa pulled back just enough to look up at him, eyes still heavy-lidded. "Do we have… food?" she asked. "Real food. Not emergency bars."
Magnus's expression softened in a way that still caught her off guard sometimes. "Yes," he said. "I was hoping you'd say that."
She smiled faintly, one corner of her mouth lifting. "Good. Because I'm starving. And I might pass out again if I don't eat."
He brushed a hand through her messy hair, unbothered by its state, then guided her gently toward the kitchen. "Sit," he said. "I'll bring it to you."
As she shuffled to the table and dropped into a chair, Alexa glanced down at herself and frowned. "Wow," she said dryly. "I look terrible."
Magnus set a plate in front of her, steam rising from it, and met her eyes. "You look alive," he said simply. "That's enough."
She didn't respond right away. Instead, she picked up her fork, the smell of food finally cutting through the fog in her head. But as she took the first bite, her shoulders relaxed, and the tension she'd been carrying since the night before eased just a little more.
For the first time since the rift opened, since the world tilted and didn't right itself, Alexa felt something close to normal.
And Magnus stayed where he was, watching her eat, content to let the moment exist exactly as it was.
Alexa sank into the sofa with a long, tired sigh, the kind that came from somewhere deeper than her lungs. The cushions dipped under her weight as she leaned back, staring at her hands resting loosely in her lap. A faint glow pulsed beneath her skin, soft, warm, almost shy. Her healing energy. It had been there since the awakening, quiet but persistent, like a reminder she couldn't turn off.
From the kitchenette, the hum of the oven filled the small apartment. Magnus slid a frozen pizza inside, and soon the smell of heating dough and cheese began to spread, grounding the space in something ordinary. Domestic. Safe.
Alexa lifted her hands slightly, watching the light flicker across her fingers.
"How can having this power feel so… restricting?" she asked quietly. "I can heal wounds. I can save lives." Her voice wavered, but she didn't stop. "And yet so many still died. I was there. I tried. I don't understand how something meant to help can still feel like it failed."
Magnus didn't answer right away. He closed the oven, leaned against the counter, and watched her for a moment, really watched her. Not as a fighter. Not as an asset. Just as Alexa.
"You remember what you asked me," he said finally, his tone gentle. "Back then. Before all of this."
She looked up at him. "About god-like powers."
He nodded. "You asked what I would do if I had them."
Alexa swallowed. "And you answered… honestly."
Magnus let the silence settle after his words, the low hum of the microwave and the distant city noise filling the gaps. Alexa's hands slowly curled into her lap, the faint glow fading as if embarrassed to be noticed. She stared at the floor, jaw tight, eyes unfocused. The question had slipped out of her without warning, but it had been sitting in her chest for days, ever since rifts opened, sirens never truly stopped, and names became numbers on screens. She wasn't asking to challenge him. She was asking because she finally understood how heavy the question really was.
"I thought," Alexa said quietly, "that if you had the power… real power… you could stop it. All of it. No more excuses. No more funerals." She let out a shaky breath. "But when I tried… when I actually used it… people still died. I felt them slipping away. I felt… useless."
Magnus leaned back slightly, resting his elbows on his knees, his tone calm, almost ordinary—like he was explaining something simple, not something that had broken gods before. "That's the lie everyone believes at first," he said. "That power means control. That if you're strong enough, fast enough, awakened enough, the world will finally listen." He glanced at her, meeting her eyes. "But reality doesn't work like that. Power doesn't erase chaos. It just lets you touch it."
Alexa frowned. "Then what's the point?" she asked. "Why give us this at all?"
"The point," Magnus replied, "is choice." He tapped his chest lightly. "Before, we were powerless and blamed fate. Now we have power, and we're forced to face the truth that some outcomes exist no matter what we do. You can heal ten people and still lose one. That doesn't make you weak. It makes you human."
She swallowed hard, her shoulders slumping as the weight finally shifted from confusion to understanding. "So… even gods fail?"
Magnus gave a small, tired smile. "Especially gods." He nudged her knee gently. "That question you asked me before, about what I'd do if I had god-like power? This is the answer. You don't become perfect. You just become responsible. For what you save… and for what you can't." Not once." She opened her eyes and looked at him. "You're awakened too… aren't you?"
Magnus didn't deny it, but his power were not limited to just the scope of mortal understanding, he can eliminate the all of the treat , but as times goes by he felt it was temporary and he personall saw what this power can to to people
"Yeah," he said simply. "Like everyone else, in one way or another."
"But you're not afraid," she said.
"I am," he answered honestly. "I just don't let it decide for me."
" imagine if i had he power to re create life, would that person the same, maybe in a sense, but what if somebody i cared deeply died and i had the power to create or bring that person to life , wouldn't that person see differently toward what i did,"
Magnus was quiet for a moment. Not because he lacked an answer, but because he had too many.
He leaned back slightly, eyes fixed on nothing in particular, as if he were looking through time rather than the room.
"You're asking the right question," he finally said. "Not can you recreate life, but what happens after."
He exhaled slowly.
"If you bring someone back, even perfectly, same memories, same voice, same heartbeat—you don't restore what was lost. You interrupt it."He turned to her then. "Death is a boundary. Crossing it changes the meaning of everything on the other side."
She listened, unmoving.
"That person might smile the same. Laugh the same. But they would wake up knowing their existence continues because you decided it should. Even if they never say it out loud, that knowledge sits between you."
Magnus placed a hand over his chest."Love that once grew freely now has weight. Gratitude becomes expectation. Affection becomes obligation."
He paused, choosing his words carefully.
"You wouldn't just be someone they love. You'd be the reason they're allowed to exist at all."
His voice lowered.
"And when one person holds that kind of power over another, even unintentionally, the relationship stops being equal."
She frowned slightly. "So it wouldn't be real?"
"It could feel real," Magnus said. "But feelings aren't the same as freedom."
He looked away again.
"They might stay with you not because they choose you, but because leaving feels like betrayal. Every argument, every doubt, every moment they want something different would be swallowed by a single thought: I owe my life to you."
He shook his head once, subtly.
"That's not love. That's a debt wearing the shape of devotion."
After a long silence, he added quietly,
"And the cruelest part is this, you might convince yourself you saved them for them. But deep down, you'd know you did it because you couldn't accept loss."
His gaze softened when it returned to her.
"Power like that doesn't just change the person you bring back. It changes you. It teaches you that death is negotiable… and once you believe that, every loss becomes a failure, every grief a temptation."
Magnus gave a faint, almost sad smile.
"That's why I'm afraid," he said. "Not of what my power can destroy, but of what it can quietly rewrite."
"And that," he finished, "is how good intentions become prisons."
That seemed to ease something in her. Alexa exhaled, long and slow, then reached out and rested her head against his shoulder. The world outside was changing, towers rising, rifts opening, nations arguing about humanity's future, but in that small room, with reheated pizza and unanswered questions, she finally understood the lesson she never wanted to learn: power didn't exist to save everyone. It existed to remind them why every life saved still mattered.
She frowned slightly. "That doesn't feel fair."
"It isn't," he replied calmly. "But it's consistent."
He reached out and gently turned her hand over, studying the glow like it was something precious, not burdensome. "Your power heals wounds. Not time. Not choices. Not chaos. You can stop blood from flowing, bones from breaking further, but you can't be everywhere. You can't decide who arrives in time and who doesn't."
Alexa's shoulders slumped. "Then what's the point?"
"The point," Magnus said softly, "is that you saved the ones you reached. And that matters, even if it doesn't feel like enough."
She was quiet, thinking.
"I used to think," she said slowly, "that if I accepted this power, I'd lose something. That it would take something from me. I wanted a simple life. Normal problems."
"And now?" he asked.
"Now," she said, exhaling, "I see that everyone has power now. Different kinds. And everyone is asking the same question I just did, why wasn't it enough?"
Magnus nodded. "That question never goes away. Even for those who seem unstoppable."
Her eyes flicked to him then. "You didn't hesitate out there," she said. "Not once. You moved like you'd done it before. You took command. You knew where to be."
He met her gaze evenly. "Because hesitation gets people killed."
"But you weren't afraid," she pressed.
"I was," he said simply. "I just didn't let it decide for me."
She hesitated, then asked softly, "Weren't you afraid that I might get hurt?"
Magnus didn't answer right away. His fingers tightened slightly, then relaxed.
"That's exactly why I kept going," he said at last. "Fear has two effects. One is that it freezes you, it convinces you that doing nothing is safer than choosing wrong."
He looked at her, eyes steady.
"And the other," he continued, "is that it sharpens you. It forces you to see what truly matters."
He inhaled slowly.
"When I was afraid of losing you, I could have stepped back. I could have built walls, hidden behind caution, convinced myself it was protection."A faint smile crossed his face. "But that kind of fear doesn't protect anyone. It just delays the hurt and makes it lonelier."
His voice lowered.
"So I chose the second path. I let fear remind me why I move forward, not when to stop."
He met her gaze fully now.
"Fear tells you what you value. Courage is deciding not to abandon it."
After a pause, he added quietly,
"I didn't push on because I thought nothing could go wrong. I pushed on because even if something did… you were worth the risk."
Alexa studied him, seeing it clearly now. Whatever had awakened in him had sharpened what was already there, his strength, his control, his certainty. She had no doubt he could survive almost anything. And that, somehow, made her chest tighten.
"I think," she said after a moment, "I finally understand what I meant back then. When I said helping everyone would become meaningless."
Magnus tilted his head. "And?"
"It's not that helping is meaningless," she said. "It's that you can't save the world alone. And once you accept that… you stop blaming yourself for being human."
The oven beeped.
Magnus stood and went to retrieve the pizza, the moment settling between them like a shared truth. When he returned, setting the plate on the table, Alexa looked calmer, still tired, still hurting, but steadier.
She reached for his hand as he sat back down.
"I don't regret this," she said. "The power. The fear. Any of it."
He squeezed her fingers gently. "Good."
"Because," she added, managing a small smile, "if this is the world now… I'd rather face it awake than pretend it isn't real."
Magnus smiled back, quiet and genuine.
"That," he said, "is more than enough."